


there are many odd shapes and shades of love

by youngerdrgrey



Category: Queen Sugar (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 02, prompted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 16:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11787234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youngerdrgrey/pseuds/youngerdrgrey
Summary: She asked, "Can you try?"or,how Charley and Remy strive for the ease that used to be instinctive. // anon asked for a post-mid-season finale story about Charley and Remy.





	there are many odd shapes and shades of love

**Author's Note:**

> I had “Shades of Love” by Desi Valentine (the song from the end of 2x08 that starts with them and fades into the Rah/Darla scene) on repeat while working on this. Highly suggest doing the same.
> 
> (this one isn’t all that happy, but neither are they at this point, tbh.)

.

.

_why do I feel this pulse, this longing inside,  
if you’re not meant to be mine?_

_._

_though the lines are blurry, just trust.  
there are many odd shapes and shades of love._

_._

_._

_"Can you try?"_

**.**

Later, she’ll recognize that gripping his hands so tight her fingers blanche might not make Remy stay any longer. For now, though, his pulse thrums beneath her fingertips. Her contacts unfocus, her eyes have been open for so long. She studies the way his throat shifts with each breath and swallow. Has he always gulped so close to her? Had his breathing shuddered before she’d begged him to love her?

His breath should come easier now. Her heart should calm. Their lips should find nothing and want nothing but each other’s. And yet.

 

**&**

 

He tucks himself in beside her that night. His shoulder nearly bumps into her ear. He mumbles his apology while she scoots up to even them out.

“Sorry, I—“

“It’s fine, just—“

The last time they’d slept in the same space, it’d been instinctive. She’d slid to him as if there were no wrong way to do it, no other option than for their bodies to mold like this.

Now, she scoots back to give him more room. Her eyes blink him in while his eyes train down at the blankets, at the bed, at the pillows. The fan whirs on the other side of the room, and his biceps twitch from being flexed. She shouldn’t have invited him to stay. Should’ve waited until her mattress was broken in, or until the fan stopped smearing the scent of fresh paint and new carpet all throughout the barracks. Or maybe she should find a way to say that. She could absolve him of this need to be with her. He doesn’t have to stay at her side just to know her. (But if he leaves—) He doesn’t have to accept where she is now just to see where she’ll be. And yet, she says nothing, and he pushes down the edge of the blanket so his shoulder stays out.

“It keeps me cool,” he says.

“Micah likes it kind of warm, so he doesn’t have to wear a lot of layers.”

His eyes meet hers. He smiles a beat. “Micah and I have that in common.”

She talks about him a lot — Micah. Her therapist loved it, said it’s nice that she relates nearly everything back to her son. Of course, her therapist also mentioned that it might serve as her main mode of deflection. If she’s talking about Micah, she doesn’t have to talk about herself. She doesn’t have to confront how she feels about a situation, only how it could affect him. She doesn’t have to remember that she’s a full person with wants and needs all of her own.

“I like it cold.” So she can burrow into the blankets and hide her nose into her pillows and know the feel of the fabric against her skin. "Not so cold that I freeze, just not warm enough that I worry about waking up in a sweat, you know?”

He hums from the back of his throat. Sinks his head into the pillow while a hand snakes up underneath it. “So less than seventy-five?”

Her hand’s above the pillow, close enough that her breath tickles across her knuckles.

“Seventy-three maybe. Seventy-four max if it’s summer.”

He laughs. “Your electric bill—“

She laughs too. “Oh they love me. And I have the fan on.”

“On high!”

Her curls dance with the fan though. They acknowledge it, play in the wind, and settle back to where they’ve called home. Something about it — it makes her chest warm. “Tell me that breeze isn’t amazing.”

He seems to like the way they dance. The way her eyelids stick just as her nose lifts up and the whole of her seems airborne. Every time she opens her eyes, he grins a bit wider. “It is.”

“Say it again.”

“The breeze is amazing, Charley.” He holds his jaw loose, like there’s more he wants to say, but he licks his lips and closes his mouth instead. (She wins. Not that it's a battle, not that it should ever be.)

Remy somehow always smells like new rain. Like damp gravel that just knows the sun’s coming out again soon. The fan spreads that around too. Livens the space with parts of him that won’t disappear by morning.

 

**&**

 

“Tell me a story for each room in the house.” A get to know him tour, if he will.

Remy leans into the request. “Starting here?” With a pot of spaghetti boiling on the back burner, sauce warming in the front.

“No better place to start."

“Well, you have my aunt to thank for my cooking skills. She used to teach me when my parents were at work. First time, though,” and he chuckles while his arms loop over each other on the counter. He sinks onto his elbows, and all the light in the room settles into his cheeks. “She had me boiling the water for the pasta, in charge of the noodles only, and I remember nothing but her screams when she came to check on it. I didn’t put enough water, so the whole bottom of the pan was burned, noodles stuck to the inside. Barely any survivors, and I learned the next best thing about cooking then. There’s almost nothing a good sauce can’t save.”

A burnt pan though. “That was one of them.”

He groans, scratches at the spot near his temple where his brain always tries to pop out. “That was definitely one of ‘em.”

Charley taught Micah to cook. Not necessarily well, and she hovered the whole time. For her, though, she learned by watching. “I spent a lot of my summers as a kid with Violet. Sitting up on a stool in her kitchen, watching her stir with her wooden spoons with the burnt handles. I could help pour a little bacon grease into the pan. I could make the biscuits with her sunflower cup.”

Remy smiles. “Hard to imagine you in the kitchen.”

She lets her face shrug for her. “It was either be in the kitchen with Vi or be out on the field with Daddy.”

“And Nova?”

Her face doesn’t fall. Her eyes might haze over. Her lips might stiffen. But her face doesn’t fall. “She had her mom back then.” True didn’t much like Charley, but she held that to herself as best as she could. Remy lifts up a bit off his elbows. Charley shakes her head though. “Nova’s always been…  _involved_. Intuitive even. She wore True’s pain as easy as she wore her red flower barrettes."

He tastes his words before he shares them. “Do you think….” He cringes, brows stapling at the bite back in his own mouth. “Could you have been the same way? Wearing your mother’s just as easily as Nova did hers?”

Her mother believed in quantifiable concepts. In results, not cheap talk or empty dreams. Not in hopes and longing, not in anything short of perfection. Her mother used to say that Ernest ran from the wild, meaning True, only to realize it’s all he ever wanted.

“Maybe not as easily.” Not as willingly or willfully. Not with the same knowledge that she was even doing it. “But I suppose it’s possible.”

Remy tilts his head to the side. He makes himself smaller sometimes, when he wants to challenge her. “You ever take it off?”

She has her ankles crossed right now as she sits at his kitchen island. Her hair’s tucked at the ears with edge control to keep the front from getting away from her. Her phone’s silent, but never more than an arm’s reach away. Honestly, her pain probably tucks right in under her mother's. A nearly matching undercoat. A nude slip she never even considers clothing.

“I don’t know.”

His eyes search hers, asking what he must not want to voice. Does she want to? She glances down.

By the time she looks back up, he's already stirring the pot again.

 

**&**

 

Violet says, “Charley’s never gonna be anybody but Charley.”

Her name lifts Charley's ears up, has her spine straightening out against the chair on Violet’s sun porch. Charley’s been on pie duty for the last ten minutes. She tagged in for Micah so he could meet Keke away from the rest of the family. But even still, someone would’ve been on the porch, so why’s Violet talking right on the other side of the wall?

“I know that.” Remy’s voice comes filtered through glass and the screen door left half open. Last she’d seen him, he was on a beer run with Ralph Angel. Yet, here he is — or there he is, with Violet.

“Hmm, you thought.” Bottles clink, so the run must have been a success. Vi can knock ‘em back with the best. “Nobody’s gonna fault you if you can’t handle all of that."

“I can handle it fine. She just….” Someone pops the cap on a bottle. “She’s never just one thing, is she?"

“Nobody ever is. And with everything she went through," Violet hums a little too close to her bottle, gets a bit of an echo for her next few words. “I wonder sometimes if she even knows just who she is anymore. She’s Charley, but she’s also the mill owner, and the sister, and Micah’s mother, and Davis’ ex-wife, and just everything she thinks everybody wants her to be. I honestly could not tell you the last time she did something just for her.”

Wasn’t that choosing him? Crossing her office with her heart in her throat while she asked him to try and be with her? Or was that just giving herself another person to hide behind? Another title. Another puzzle to work through so she doesn’t have to just be.

She’d wanted someone to fight for her, so she asked him. But she did ask him because of who he was, or only because he was there? Because he wanted to know her and she wanted to be known?

His hand’s on the door before he speaks. His foot inside the house and the rest of him still taking on the sun. Charley can’t help but jump at the door. Turn to stare at him as he stares back.

“Charley,” he says her name like an apology.

She jolts up. “The pies should be cool by now. I’ll—Counter.“ 

She grabs one of the pies and darts for the kitchen. His feet follow, soft but insistent, and maybe leaving Violet wasn’t the right idea. Maybe it’d be easier to talk to him with someone else around to remind her of her place. Remind her who she’s supposed to be rather than allowing for her to be whoever the moment calls for. 

“Charley, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says.

“Meanings don’t change anything, Remy.” Intent doesn’t negate the effects. It’s not even a conversation she wants to have, so she drops the pie onto the counter and leaves that sentence with it. Her hands find her hips on instinct. Her lips thin out before she lifts them to bare her teeth. To-to free her mouth, to breathe easier, to think clearer. All she’s been trying to do is figure out what she’s meant to do now. Without Davis, without her dad, without the farm, without anything that’d been grounding her into a specific plane of existence, and somehow she’d gotten it into her head that maybe she’s meant to be with him. Are her instincts that wrong?

For months, they’d felt like a given. They’d felt like a current beneath her toes, like an endless stream of sand tugging her into the water. Like a promise.

He rolls his neck instead of his eyes. “This used to be easier. You. Me.  _Us_.”

“It didn’t 'used to be' anything." So she made them real. She begged for this before that promise had the chance to sour. "It wasn’t real before. Wasn’t grounded in anything other than some fantasy of what it is we could be.” Like they could find the missing pieces of Ernest in each other. They could fill their wounds with promises that only amount to soundbites for a cheap article on moving on.

“And this is real to you?” The two of them on opposite sides of Violet’s kitchen. Fighting when they could be doing literally anything else.

“I guess. I mean, it’s something.”

“Of course it’s something, Charley, but is it what you want?”

She wanted love. She wanted a community that welcomed and accepted her. She wanted to go bed each night without dreading the next day, or to wake up and not wonder if she were better off never getting up.

She wanted the warmth at the small of her back from the night they danced at the High Yellow re-opening. Or the flowers he’d held in his hand when she stood him up the first time. Wanted to kiss away the smile he had during their L.A. apology and swallow down every sound that could follow it. Wanted before.

But it’s now, and there’s two other pies that haven’t been brought into the kitchen, and she has a business that he does not always agree with her on. She has a son that hardly talks to her, and a blow dryer that she hasn’t moved from the table even if it’s been eight days since she last used it, and a man who might want to love her but might not be able to now that they actually have the space for it.

“I want this.” Rather, “I want to want this.” As it is.

He says, "I don't know if that's enough."

It might not be enough, but it's all she has. It's all she can give. And we all know Charley, she'd rather bluff and walk away with nothing.

"For now, it's gonna have to be."

He shakes his head. "You can't simply  _will_ everything into existence."

"I can try."

His eyes flash. His lips thin. "I don't know if I can."

Her tongue scratches at the inside of her mouth. Throat aches. "Then I guess we'll find out, won't we?" Her eyes burn, but tears might not help her here. Honestly, she doesn't know what will. "I need to get the other pies. You..." Her palm goes out to him in a motion. He's too far to grab though. Too nebulous to grasp with words. She sighs. "You do whatever it is you want to do, Remy. Fill me in later."

 

**&**

 

> _[DRAFT]_
> 
> **Remy:** Easier doesn't mean better, Charley.
> 
> **Remy:**  You walk away so often, I'm starting to see more of your back than the rest of you
> 
> **Remy:** I want to want this too

 

**&**

 

> _[DRAFT]_
> 
> **Charley:**  I probably shouldn't have walked away
> 
> **Charley:**  Not sure if I should text you, you left right after dinner. I'm starting to sense a trend.
> 
> **Charley:**  You were right, by the way. I'm never just one thing. I'm not exactly comfortable with becoming static, or complacent, or comfortable. But with you
> 
>  

**&**

 

"I'll say the same thing to you I said to Nova, when you find something good--"

Charley cuts her off though. Crushes the homemade crust back to powder with her fork. "I held on, Aunt Vi. Best as I could."

"You sure about that?"

She drops the fork. "He wants this to be easy. Nothing about this has been easy."

"You sure fell into this easy enough the first time."

"Falling into it and staying in it are very different things."

"They don't have to be. Hollywood and me are just as easy as we've ever been. There's nothing you can't fix by talking and working through."

Like when Hollywood took off for six months rather than talking about the dance, that working through? Charley holds that one in. "I put myself out there. I did my part. Now, it's up to him."

Violet actually laughs. "You have never been happy leaving something to somebody else."

"It's not about happy; it's about...." About tackling her father's legacy together, about her getting a divorce and him being the first person she wants to tell, about wanting to try again even when her last marriage (her last everything, really) cut her so deeply. It's about him. Everything she chooses to be and everything they will be together.

Violet nods. "Exactly." She must take silence as a victory. "Hold on."

Her phone buzzes on the table.

 

> _To Charley Bordelon // Today (9:17 pm)  
>  _**Remy:** I've been trying, Charley, and God willing, I'm not about to stop now.

 

Vi motions to the discarded pie crust. "You want that wrapped up to go?"

"No, I can finish it." He doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

 

**.**

**.**

**Author's Note:**

> a part of me had hoped this would come out light, but I feel like their relationship’s in a transitional period. they’ve gotta learn to lean into the discomfort, question each other so they can figure out what they need to make this work.
> 
> but that’s me. what do you think? what worked for you? what didn't? you okay?


End file.
